Dilly Dally Interviewed: Canadian Punks Stripping Guitar Music Back To The Bare Essentials

Katie Monks and Liz Ball first moved to Toronto in search of “restless punks and somewhere to go and fuck shit up.” What they found, however, was a crushing disappointment.

“There was this weird indie folk thing going on and it was really boring,” lead singer Monks says of the Canadian scene of 2010. “Our music was way louder – and there were no hand claps or tambourines.”

Having grown up listening to Radiohead and The Libertines (“They were like fuck everything and let’s carve out a place in this world where we can truly be ourselves. There was something very punk about that”), Katie and guitarist Liz eventually found the paradise they craved. “We had to find people who shared the same amount of aggression as we did. That’s when we found Jimmy [Tony, bass] and Ben [Reinhartz, drums]. That was huge.”

Operating under the mantra of “Simplicity is powerful”, Dilly Dally’s music is aggressive and immediate in a way Pixies and Sonic Youth fans will adore. Monks’ voice sets them apart from being mere revivalists, though. Ragged and pained, she howls her way through the songs on debut album ‘Sore’ and writes lyrics like an unfiltered live journal.
“I’m always exploring my voice,” she says. “A lot of women sing very soft and sweet and it feels hard to relate to. Expressing your anger is positive. My influences are male singers: Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, Wolf Parade, Frank Black, Sonic Youth. I like music where I just think, ‘Fuck, this is me’.”

Or, as Ball puts it, “We get together and drink wine, smoke weed and do what feels right.”